For maximum consumer acceptance, ready-to-eat cereals should have a crisp texture and yet be tender and have a light friable structure. By "ready-to-eat-cereals" we mean bite sized edible products which contain substantial levels of flour or other cereal-grain derived ingredients and which maintain their structural integrity for a reasonable time in milk. Such cereals are typically served in a bowl with milk, and to be generally acceptable, after the milk is added their crisp texture should persist until the entire bowl full is consumed. Examples of such ready-to-eat cereals are crisp corn flakes, Crispy Wheats and Raisins(.TM.), Captain Crunch(.TM.), Crunch Berries(.TM.), Rice Krispies(.TM.), and Crispix(.TM.). In many instances the acceptable bowl life of a breakfast cereal product is achieved largely by providing a heavy sugar coating. In other instances the manufacturer may produce a less tender, less friable product in order to obtain an acceptable quality of bowl life. In some cases, such as in the case of puffed wheat and puffed rice, bowl life has been found to be very short compared with other ready-to-eat cereals. Also, cereals made with conventional extrusion-expansion methods tend to have relatively short bowl life, as well, unless coated, or otherwise treated.
Another class of foods which might be potentially attractive as ready-to-eat cereals are cereal-grain containing products such as cookies and other products which are analogous to baked goods. Such products could be manufactured in bite size pieces such as for example, bite size oatmeal cookie pieces. Such highly nutritious ready-to-eat cereal-derived foods have not been developed commercially as ready-to-eat cereals, in spite of their tasty and highly nutritious wholesome character, because such products have heretofore suffered from very short bowl life and quickly disintegrate when immersed in milk. It is well known, for example, that oatmeal cookies that are dunked in milk tend to become soggy quickly, and in fact tend to disintegrate very quickly. Interestingly enough, we have discovered that higher shortening levels in the cookie formulations, typically correlate with lower "bowl life" i.e. shorter "dunk" disintegration times. We have not yet rigorously established the scientific basis for this phenomenon though one could speculate on several possible explanations. It is consistent with the "tenderization" effect associated with the addition of shortenings, for example.
It is the purpose of the invention to provide a method for improving the bowl life of ready-to-eat cereals, and specifically to provide a new class of tasty, nutritious, wholesome ready-to-eat cereals which exhibit substantially improved bowl life, even without the application of a sugar coating. Preferred products may utilize substantially reduced sugar coatings, or no sugar coatings at all.
It is another object of the present invention to provide expanded ready-to-eat cereals, whether oven baked, or cooked by other means, having improved bowl life.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a ready-to-eat cereal comprising bite size pieces having a composition similar to cookies, such as for example to oatmeal cookies and other cookie-like compositions containing normal levels of fat, and yet which have emminently satifactory bowl life when served in the style of ready-to-eat cereals.